Maharashtra in beginning of second wave of COVID-19: Centre

Amid rising coronavirus cases, the Centre has asked the Maharashtra government to focus on strict and effective containment strategy as the measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns, etc. have very limited impact on containing or suppressing the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a strong-worded letter, Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan warned the Uddhav Thackeray-led government that Maharashtra is “in the beginning of a second wave of Covid”, and there was there were glaring gaps like from limited contact tracing to lack of effort to map cases and contacts.
The Centre’s response comes on the findings of a Central team of experts deployed to Maharashtra to review the surge in Covid-19 cases in the state.

In his letter to Maharashtra chief secretary, Bhushan asked the state administration to bring down the state’s test positivity rate, and step up contact-tracing and vaccinations.

“The testing has to be augmented to bring the test positivity rate to less than 5%. Whereas the mainstay of testing shall be RT-PCR, the State should also utilize RAT kits as per ICMR guidance especially in containment zones and high-risk settings like super-spreader events, bus stops, railway stations, slums, densely populated areas etc” the Union health secretary wrote in his letter.

“Measures such as night curfews, weekend lockdowns, etc. have very limited impact on containing or suppressing the transmission. Hence the district administration should focus on strict and effective containment strategy,” the letter further read.

Click here to read the full letter

Maharashtra on March 15 reported 15,051 new coronavirus cases, taking the state's tally to 23,29,464. With 48 more people succumbing to the contagious virus, the fatalities count increased to 52,909.